Elliptical Feature Agreement and MaxElide

• 발행기관: 한국영어학학회
• 저자명: Seungwan Ha
• 간행물 정보: 『영어학연구』영어학연구 제27호, 115~131쪽, 전체 17쪽
• 주제분류: 어문학 > 영어와문학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2009.06.30

영문 초록

The goal of this paper is to propose a syntactic analysis of MaxElide effects. Past researchers have been intrigued by the fact that VP-ellipsis is impossible whenever sluicing is possible. Various attempts have been made, but not very successful to provide a theoretical account, so that the researchers had to stipulate, with descriptive terms, that ellipsis must target the largest possible constituent. In this paper, we attempt to make a theoretical explanation of why such a phenomenon exists. We propose that there be a functional projection, called Ellipsis Phrase (EP) in the left-periphery, and that the uninterpretable uE in EP must agree with the E feature in a functional head, such as Focus for sluicing and Voice for VP-ellipsis. In the cased where both functional heads bear the E features, only the closest E may be able to agree with uE, following the standard locality condition. This locality condition of feature agreement captures MaxElide effects. Since the E feature in the Focus head is always closer to the one in the Voice head, uE always agree with the E feature in the Focus head. Under the assumption that only the agreed E feature imposes PF-deletion, sluicing always takes place. VP-ellipsis is correctly predicted to be blocked since it could not agree with uE in this situation.

키워드

MaxElide VP-Ellipsis Sluicing Elliptical features Agree